Anastasia
by caitewarren
Summary: Alison journeys to Storybrooke to attempt to clue together what happened in the 15 years she can't remember whilst she was declared dead. Jefferson is slowly going insane living in a cursed world watching his beloved daughter from afar and is shocked to discover his child's mother isn't dead rather much alive and so begs the question of what happened to Grace's mother.


Her name is Alison Ruth Wyatt or so they tell her. She's twenty-eight-years-old and adopted. When she was a newborn Alison was found alongside a freeway in northern Maine with her twin sister, Emma but that was all anyone knew. She's been missing for a decade and a half, presumed dead for eight years and not a soul has looked for her since. The newspapers and her nurses dubbed her as "Anastasia" but she felt far from a Russian Tsarina rather much more like a shell of a person. There were fifteen years of her life left undocumented, unseen, and unknown to anyone. Being fond upon a freeway seemed to be one of her quirks, this time, clad in a medieval gown unconscious and found by a very startled family.

"And this is us at Disney when you were eight," Cassandra Wyatt choked out through pouts of blubbering. She was a short woman with a badly dyed blonde hair that was flaky and fell in uneven layers and whenever Cassandra ventured to the hospital she'd spend the better half of her visits in hysterics whilst showing old sappy slightly yellowed pictures of them together at various family outings, vacations and dance recitals. The girl in the pictures was undoubtedly her, their eyes were both the same shade of brown though the little girl had white blonde hair, "your favorite princess was Snow White." The woman dramatically clenched her meaty hand over her chest and proceeded to choke out sobs.

It was John Wyatt whose company Alison enjoyed much more. He was very much the opposite of his spouse, a thin sickly man with a greenish pallor to his skin, with a thin layering of grayish brown hair, beady grey eyes and a thin aging face. He had a tense but emotionless persona remnants of his post traumatic drama caused during two tours of Vietnam in his youth. Their visits were spent in utter silence, the crappy television would make ambient noises to fill the soundless void and sometimes he'd offer to fetch pudding from one of the downstairs vending machines and he'd talk in-between mouthfuls of the stuff. She'd learned his favorite thing in the world was chocolate and he was nearly certain the moon landing in 1969 was one of the biggest hoaxes in history.

"Butternut is this coming back to you?" Cassandra asked her blue eyes growing wide and hopeful as they always did when she proposed this question.

"No." She answered bluntly not caring anymore for the sound of a cat dying slash being stepped on squeal that escaped Cassandra. Unable to hold the lingering question anymore she dared asked, "why did you stop looking for me? If you claim to love me, to be _my _mother but yet they assume I'm dead and you just believe them? There was no body, no sign of foul play, people just don't go missing, and others just stop looking for them."

"You left," John uttered from where he stood leaning against the wall far from her bedside. In one of his bony hands he clutched a sketch book to the side of his body safeguarding it.

"John!" Cassandra scolded, "shush!"

"It's the truth ain't it?"

"Why'd I leave?"

If looks could kill surely Cassandra's would have murdered John in cold dead blood. Her memory was out of whack but something was telling her being angry wasn't Cassandra's forte. Rather the short plump lady seemed to be the type of person to smother people with love, affection and food not caring much for direct confrontation and avoiding the problem until it became too eminent not to face.

"We can't just erase who she is by playing 'select-a-memory' Cas. It ain't right."

The pair of them locked in an intense staring contest as if willing the other to stop with their minds. They seemed to have a love-hate relationship, hate mostly, making snide remarks about one other and rude rebuttals under their breathes just loud enough for the other to hear. It didn't seem to be love.

"To find your real parents," her adopted mother spat out bitterly with venom in her voice, "the people who'd left you for dead upon the side of a freeway because we weren't good enough for you." With that she made her grand entrance wobbling out of the hospital room.

"That wasn't the only reason," John supplied in a hushed raspy tone. His beady eyes darted around the room as if searching for invisible entities or persons that would be listening in, "you were convinced that they needed you, that they'd come in their dreams to you," he limped over towards the bed delicately handing over the sketchbook, "your ma and I thought youse just had an over reactive imagination at 'irst. You were four when you drew the first stick figures, a raven haired mom with hazel eyes and a dad with blonde hair and blue eyes and as youse got older you kept drawing them again and again."

The drawings in the sketchbook only got progressively better. Clothes were added, scenery was added, birds and more and more details to the two people's faces as well. Their clothes ranged from armor upon the man, tattered upon the woman into fancy clothes of medieval times much like the dress she'd be found in. Her parents stood in front of a beautiful castle upon a lake nestled by monstrous mountains.

"Did I find them?" she asked quietly as her hands traced over the outlines of a portrait of her mother. The woman was beautiful skin as white as snow, hair as black as night, eyes that carried a brightness and yet such a deep utter sadness, and a half-smile.

"Dunno."

She pushed back the itchy blankets and padded along her tip toes to avoid touching the dirty floor for as long as possible before arriving before the mirror. Her hair is dirty blonde truly but she hadn't had the energy to force herself to bathe under the cold water so today it was a few shades darker and greaser. She held up the picture of her mother against her cheek, the spiral metal piece of the notebook digging into the side of her chin as she scanned for signs of similarity between them. Her mother's face was rounder than hers was; Alison's nose was narrower and thinner. The shape of our eyes she decided upon they were both slightly large but almond in shape framed by long eye lashes.

"I think Cassandra was jealous of her," John said softly as he appeared in the reflection behind her. He was looking down at his feet and his hands were tucked into the pockets of his baggy worn sweats, "your birth mother is just as beautiful as you are. And beauty was never something Cassandra ever possessed," There was a slight chuckle as he shook his head and then began to scratch at it as if pondering why he'd ever married her, "you were the best thing that ever happened to us. To me, youse was what kept us together. I haven't seen that she-devil in eight years," he admitted, "I was eh living in an homeless shelter when the cops called and gave me the best damn call of my life. You'd be found physically unharmed just without your memories."

Uneasiness settled over her as she processed the emotional mushiness and heart ache present in those words. Her stomach painfully knotted and twisted she knows she's supposed to have this familial father-daughter relationship with this stranger and he loves her. No matter how many times she's attempting to force love upon Cassandra or John it felt wrong, foreign and unfamiliar.

"I'm sorry…I can't…it's just too much," She managed to stutter out as she tossed the sketch pad upon her lumpy uncomfortable hospital bed, "I think I just need to be alone." The words drive a knife right through his very heart and just for a moment his facial expression flickers betraying the guilt, the heart ache, and the pain. He uttered something incoherent underneath his breathe before hurriedly walking out of the room and dashing down the hall and out of sight. She's an awful person she decides as the trembles begin to take her.

That night she spent alone. The first one she could ever recall. The room made odd noises and her roommate's persistent coughing kept her up for nearly all hours as she stared at the cracked ceilings counting off sheep in her head but sleep evaded her.

"A road trip?" Dr. Hale mused in a high pitched dubious voice as he goes over her charts. He's a tiny man with a head of fiery red hair and green eyes and a childish aurora about him. A goofy half-grin almost always graced his pale face and no matter the hour of the day he spoke in the same chirper voice.

"Just to figure things out, John and Cassandra are trying but this force-feeding of my memories isn't helping me….," he opens his mouth to speak but she cuts him off, "I know _time._ I've been cooped up in this bed for nearly two months and you've said it yourself I'm healthy and have retained many of my motor skills."

"I was actually going to agree with you, Alison, people heal differently and from what I've gathered from your parents you'd always treasured doing things on your own. Perhaps your healing stems from time left to your own thoughts, maybe you'll draw something again," his eyes room over towards her pillow was the end of the sketchbook is sticking out.

"You've looked at them?" she asked accusingly.

He held up his hands in mock surrender, "no. I just remember the newspaper articles mentioning you to be an aspiring young artist who had a bright future in front of her and perhaps that very future is in front of you now. And if I can make a suggestion go north, Maine's real pretty this time of a year."

"Maine….don't think I've ever been there. Is Storybrooke in Maine?"

Dr. Hale shrugged tilting his head and raised one of his bushy eyebrows, "why do you ask?"

"The last picture my younger self drew was of a sign. 'Welcome to Storybrooke.' Perhaps that was where I was going."

The last picture in the book was haunting. A two asphalt lane road leading to no where a wolf stood just to the right of the sign its mouth open as if howling at the half-erased moon. White skinny trees covered each side of the page, leafless hinting it the picture was supposed to be in the dead of the winter. A clock tower loomed in the distance and there was something tugging at her. Her memories perhaps but it was a blank upon recall.

**A/N: How I came up with this I can't even begin to explain but anyway meet Alison Ruth Wyatt, Emma's twin sister, who in appearance resembles Charming/ David more closely. She has her grandmother Ruth's brown eyes. And I hope you enjoy it.**


End file.
